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The search for intelligent life has been ongoing for decades; the thought that we are not alone in the universe is quite an exciting thought and has prompted many different forms of attempted message sending for just as long. We have thoughts of an alien race being friendly – benevolent even but what if they’re not? What if we actually contacted a tyrannical race of blood thirsty butchers I mean let’s not sugar coat it what would humanity have to offer a far superior race? It’s not like the human race as a whole is striving forward for the good of our kind; we are scared, suspicious creatures who seem to have lost the ability to help our fellow man. We’re still happy to march in file to fight and kill people we don’t even know for somebody sat behind a desk counting numbers because there’s an argument as to who owns the majority of the oil.

2 days ago there was a meeting held at The Royal Society in London Organised by Dr Martin Dominik and Professor John Zarnecki to discuss ‘The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society’

“…Astronomers are now able to detect planets orbiting stars other than the Sun where life may exist, and living generations could see the signatures of extra-terrestrial life being detected. Should it turn out that we are not alone in the Universe, it will fundamentally affect how humanity understands itself – and we need to be prepared for the consequences…” we’ve know for a while that there are many gas giants, like our sun, that are able to support life but looking at them through a lens doesn’t get us any further to contact.

“Part of me is with the enthusiasts and I would like us to try to make proactive contact with a wiser, more peaceful civilisation. Given that the consequences of contact may not be what we initially hoped for, then we need governments and the UN to get involved in any discussions.” Dr Marek Kukula commented, public astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

“My basic argument is that, contrary to most neo-Darwinian thinking at the moment, evolution is much more predictable than people think. In particular, I would argue that the emergence, by evolution, of intelligence, cognitive capacity and all that stuff is an inevitability.” – Conway Morris, who gave a talk entitled; predicting what extraterrestrial life will be like and preparing for the worst. So I guess it’s yet another case of sit tight and let the big boys and girls sort out what’s best for us.

A top boffin at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) says that the titanic machine may possibly create or discover previously unimagined scientific phenomena, or “unknown unknowns” – for instance “an extra dimension”. – But will it stop experiments? I highly doubt it!

The LHC is a 27 Kilometre underground ‘doughnut’ for firing around or colliding high-speed hadrons, usually protons or lead irons – but what for I hear you cry. Well these collisions can be very violent creating conditions similar to the time of the big bang when the entire universe was in its infancy. Apparently smaller than a proton for some time, a concept that pecks my head if I think about it too long.

So juggling the very fabric of space and time, although it fascinates me it’s also pretty scary. I mean what if we were to pull ‘something’ through or cause mass destruction if there are parallel worlds? What consequences could it have to our own world? Is mankind all too eager to ‘flip the switch’ all the time without taking a step back? Are we selfish? All good questions sadly I can’t answer for the whole of mankind. Science is moving on in huge leaps now not the fairy steps we saw in the 50’s and 60’s. Other reports suggest the LHC could ‘accidently’ create a black hole which would, rather annoyingly, vacuum most of our solar system into it destroying most if not all of the life therein! Something to look forward to wouldn’t you agree..?

If something could be this devastating do we not think a global online vote would be the way to decide whether or not it gets built? After all its tax payers cash, I don’t really want to play Half Life for real…